MovieChat Forums > Memento (2001) Discussion > Some issues with Memento

Some issues with Memento

posted 2 years ago by Drooch (5333)
23 replies | jump to latest

Another great film by Nolan but some things don’t sit right.

First, Leonard's condition is so extreme that there’s no way he’d be able to function alone in the outside world, let alone successfully go on a killing spree. He’d be freaking out every 15 minutes when he’s ‘reborn’ into the world.

Second, the condition is complicated by the fact that Leonard has also forgotten crucial information from before he lost his memory. It seems he made himself forget that his wife was never murdered, that she had diabetes, and presumably died by suicide the way Sammy Jankis’ wife went. How exactly does one forcibly forget something like that without being completely insane? Is this movie about a guy with retrograde amnesia or a total lunatic - can’t help feeling it would be stronger to focus on one or the other.

Third, the film goes for a ‘we all lie to ourselves to be happy’ message, but Leonard’s condition is so specific and rare that I struggle to relate to his experience. It feels like a bit of a reach to universalise the very particular experience of Leonard. Like Nolan wants to force a broader ‘theme’ onto a story that doesn’t really have one (I suppose it could be seen as a madman trying to justify his behaviour and convince himself he’s not severely mentally ill, but I don’t think that’s what Nolan was going for).

Fourth, like many Nolan films it’s all very clever but doesn’t hook me emotionally. As with Tenet, I’m sat there puzzled and with a minor headache but I don’t much care about what will happen or has happened. I don’t really care about the characters, and that’s partly because they’re all shits. Even the somewhat sympathetic protagonist turns out to be a serial killing psychopath. It’s got that moody adolescent boy quality, I prefer something like Interstellar which has a strong emotional hook, some vulnerability, and relationships of consequence.

Finally, Leonard keeps saying to people ‘I have this condition’… how does he know? He lost his ability to memorise before he was diagnosed. Surely every 15 minutes his experience would be having a violent fight with his wife’s rapists to ‘WTF! Where am I!? What’s going on!? Arrggghh!’ etc.

Memento is a great puzzle film but doesn’t quite deserve the gushing praise it seems to get. It’s a neat concept but overcomplicated and the storytelling is lacking.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 2 years ago

Re 1
As a Nolan fanboy, I gotta say, I think Nolan's films intentionally require considerable suspensions of disbelief. I don't necessarily think that's a fault, or a weakness (although it's actually one of my biggest issues with Inception). But it's pretty consistent that we need to abandon our common sense understanding of the world. That said...

Re 2
I always thought that that the film was making the point that he's a lunatic. I'm not entirely sure that the condition was real at all, to any degree.

Re 3
So yeah, I thought this was a story about a madman to be honest.

Re 4
That's a good point. I loved Tenet. I loved Memento. But I don't really see these as being films that I connect to on an emotional level. Which is kind of an interesting choice now when I think about it. Inception and Interstellar definitely had that emotional punch, while these other films were a bit more detached.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

I'm not entirely sure that the condition was real at all, to any degree.

I get that Nolan wants us to question the veracity of things but the whole film revolves around a man with anterograde amnesia and that’s not up for debate any more than Leonard’s funky blonde hair.

[–] Seperatrix (1086) 2 years ago

I had a friend once tell me that they didn't believe Leonard's condition was real at all. They thought he was crazy. I, like you, insisted that we have to accept that he has anterograde amnesia and in spite of the logical difficulty accepting that premise, just have to roll with it and play along.

But after all the years I start to wonder if we're meant to see Leonard as such an unreliable narrator that we can't even trust his assessment of his condition. That maybe he is, in fact, "crazy."

That brief shot of him displacing Sammy in what may be a mental ward could be a tipoff.

Not to mention, for the life of me I've never heard a satisfactory explanation for why he'd want to wear the clothes of a man he has just murdered, let alone drive around in his car immediately thereafter.

Sounds crazy to me.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

The whole reverse chronology motif is part of the thriller about a guy with anterograde amnesia concept that the whole film is built on - allowing the audience to experience the world as Leonard does. If he doesn’t have amnesia then the film is all a dream, or doesn’t take place on planet earth. No, the amnesia is fundamental.

Nolan has just complicated the whole thing by throwing in the stuff about Leonard rewriting his old memories, and being a sociopath. I wonder if he was just trying to differentiate his film from his brother’s short story ‘Memento Mori’, from which the film is inspired. Trying to put his own spin on a simple and effective story and overcomplicating it in the process.

[–] Seperatrix (1086) 2 years ago

I don't disagree with anything you've said. I suppose my perspective is that while, yes, we are to buy into the basic premise, there is always the possibility that Nolan slipped something else under the surface. As the basic premise feels a bit too lumpy left on its own.

Do I believe that? Probably not. But as I mentioned before, I have no idea why the main character would insist on putting on a mans clothes immediately after he's murdered him and then drive around in his car.

Anterograde amnesia alone doesn't explain that and yet, there it is . . . written, directed and filmed for us to see as part of the story.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 2 years ago

Huh, I didn't realize that people actually thought the condition was truly real until seeing what you all wrote. I thought that was the whole twist of the movie.

That said, I do think that he is "forgetting" every few minutes. But it's not from a natural condition. It's not "real" amnesia. But it's real enough for him. And I think that's the crazy part.

[–] Seperatrix (1086) 2 years ago

Well, the "condition" is explained over and over by Leonard, along with the plethora of notes, tattoos, photos, etc. So we're supposed to key in on that idea, whether it is real or imagined on his part.

I think when Teddy mentions that Leonard has deliberately blackened out portions of the reports we have a clue about Leonard. Then the final scene where we see Leonard deliberately exploiting his own condition to manipulate himself into believing Teddy is the one he has been chasing all along -- John G -- we get the sense of how the film wants to play with the notion of how easily memory (and perhaps more) can be so easily distorted.

So yes, to some extent I believe anterograde amnesia is a real thing for Leonard -- even if Leonard doesn't really have it but cons himself into believing he does.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 2 years ago

Agree on all of that!

So earlier, when I wrote "I'm not entirely sure that the condition was real at all, to any degree.", I think I was a bit too strong with that. I like how you phased this:

So yes, to some extent I believe anterograde amnesia is a real thing for Leonard -- even if Leonard doesn't really have it but cons himself into believing he does.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

Suggesting that Mememto isn’t about a man with anterograde amnesia is like saying Jaws isn’t about a shark. Leonard absolutely has AA as a result of head trauma.

Nolan complicating this with additional elements like him rewriting his old memories doesn’t change the core conceit of the film.

The twist is simply that he isn’t the avenging hero he seems to be, but a delusional sociopathic serial killer.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 2 years ago

Suggesting that Mememto isn’t about a man with anterograde amnesia is like saying Jaws isn’t about a shark. Leonard absolutely has AA as a result of head trauma.

I guess we do fundamentally disagree on this, with Seperatrix somewhere in between, I think.

I disagree with the Jaws bit. I would say that Memento isn't really about a man with anterograde amnesia kinda like how The Babadook isn't really about a creepy, pale monster.

Memento is about a delusional sociopathic serial killer, and is also a take on how a person can pervert memory to live in denial.

Babadook is about an abusive mother, and how uncontrollable grief can utterly transform a parent into something frightening.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

In The Babadook the monster isn’t real.

In Jaws the shark is real. In Memento the anterograde amnesia is real - the character unequivocally suffers from that condition.

[–] acidraindrop (3055) 2 years ago

I can't convince my friend that the monster in the Babadook isn't real. lol I guess I can't convince you that the amnesia in Memento isn't real either.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

That might be true but there’s no equivalence between me and your friend. He’s wrong and I’m right.

[–] MichaelJPollock (649) 2 years ago

Check out a German dude named Daniel Schmidt. The guy has legit anterograde amnesia.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16755978/lose-memory-find-love-have-baby/

There's a fascinating one hour documentary about his life and condition produced by the French-German TV channel 'Arte', if you can catch it. Well worth it.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

Thanks.

[–] Lord Rake (3745) 2 years ago

I think Teddy was just messing with Leonard when he told him his wife was a diabetic. He starts getting Leonard to doubt his own memories because he is trying to manipulate him. Teddy's photo is of coarse don't believe his lies. Sammy was a real person and it is hard to believe that Sammy and Leonard's wife both were diabetics and both used the insulin trick on their husbands.

"First, Leonard's condition is so extreme that there’s no way he’d be able to function alone in the outside world, let alone successfully go on a killing spree. He’d be freaking out every 15 minutes when he’s ‘reborn’ into the world."

I agree, I don't even understand how he realizes he has the same condition as Sammy immediately. I know there is the conditioning thing but other behaviors he cannot learn like that.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

Sammy’s wife didn’t exist. Leonard is in severe denial about his wife who had diabetes and wasn’t killed in the attack… so he transposes some of those details into a fictional wife he invents for Sammy.

(That is a colossal act of denial that surely Leonard would have to repeat every 15 minutes? Or has he managed to alter his old memories through repetition and conditioning - something that didn’t work for Sammy, if any of the stuff with Sammy picking up electrified objects was real 🙃)

Teddy's photo is of coarse don't believe his lies.

Leonard writes that because he has selected Teddy as his next target, as punishment for telling Leonard the awful truth.

[–] Lord Rake (3745) 2 years ago

So now Leonard cannot remember anything but can come up with an elaborate plot which involves creating a character that does not exist? We are shown both Leonard remembering his wife getting the needle and then he remembers just pinching her, it kind of implies that Teddy is manipulating him. Teddy also says after that they found the person responsible for his wife and took him out. And then that there have been others. Plus Teddy is using Leonard to make money by killing drug dealers and calling him all day just to mess with him. It's hard to believe everything Teddy says.

Teddy does lie to him multiple times in the film, just off hand he tries to get him to drive a different car than the stolen one he is in. There is no way to definitively say either way, we'd have to believe Leonard is capable of really amazing things without a short term memory or that Teddy is a bad guy who lies.

Leonard also responds to conditioning, so why would his wife try to trick him into giving her too much insulin? She would know he is not faking the condition.

[–] Seperatrix (1086) 2 years ago

But at the "end" of the film, Teddy has no reason to lie. He, seemingly out of sheer exhaustion, lays it all out for Leonard: they caught the killer but Leonard doesn't remember doing so. There is no reason for Teddy to lie to Leonard about Sammy, because what happened (or didn't) with Sammy has no bearing on Teddy's plan for Leonard.

There is no need to keep Leonard in a confused state -- he's doing quite well on his own in that regard.

It truly is one of the curiosities that Leonard can't remember that his wife required insulin shots. Yet he can remember that he has memory problems. One of the many things that I don't think allows for anterograde amnesia being his only affliction.

Either that or it's just bad writing.

I still enjoy the film.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

This ☝🏻

Teddy uses Leonard but at the end he’s venting the truth because 1) why not, Lenny won’t remember, 2) he’s exhausted and frustrated with Lenny's constant bullshitting, denial and cluelessness, and 3) it’s time for the audience to hear the final revelation/twist.

You can choose not to believe anything Teddy says but then there’s no truth and the whole thing is just a big, pointless fart. Also, in order to have the ‘we lie to ourselves to be happy’ final message of the film we have to know the truth - so we can see Leonard reject it in favour of the comforting lie that gives his life purpose.

The two shots of Leonard pinching and then jabbing his wife is to show the delusion followed by the reality. Just as the moment when Sammy becomes Leonard is to show that Leonard has been displacing uncomfortable memories about his life into ‘the story of Sammy Jankis’. Sammy did exist but his wife didn’t, Leonard simply bolted the memory of his wife onto Sammy because the thought of her not being murdered means he has nothing to avenge… no purpose to his life.

This is all part of the final revelation that Leonard, our hero, is a delusional maniac as well as a sufferer of anterograde amnesia. We’ve been rooting for a severely mentally ill serial killer.

It’s a neat idea but it’s messy writing from Nolan. Too many things going on, too muddled, slightly contradictory.

Leonard also responds to conditioning,

What do you mean ‘also’? Sammy didn’t respond to conditioning, he kept getting zapped by the triangle.

so why would his wife try to trick him into giving her too much insulin? She would know he is not faking the condition.

It’s unknown if Leonard’s wife suffered the same fate as Sammy’s (fictional) wife, but in ‘the Sammy Jankis story’ she commits suicide by having Sammy repeatedly inject her until she dies. Her hope is that he’ll stop and reveal himself to be a faker… but he wasn’t one.

Maybe Leonard ‘killed’ his wife in the same way but we don’t know. I doubt it since Teddy would have dropped that bomb during his epic re-vent-lation at the end.

[–] hootiehome (408) 2 years ago

I see what you did…

Nice.

[–] Drooch (5333) 2 years ago

What did I do?

[–] hootiehome (408) 2 years ago

I swear to dog that you had listed the “I have this condition” paragraph twice. Like you had “forgotten” that had already listed it.